


You're Not Small

by Justice4LolaPerry (Bee17)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bee17/pseuds/Justice4LolaPerry
Summary: Lola Perry hears a familiar voice cutting through the darkness.





	

Lola Perry had spent her entire life needing to control everything around her. 

She packed her own lunches for school from the tender age of seven. Her room was always meticulously neat, something that unsettled her parents. 

For as long as she could remember, she had coped by taking things into her own hands and mustering some form of control. She could always be found cleaning and baking when she had a test coming up at school. She refused to drink at the few parties she attended, not wanting to be anything like the friends she looked after at those parties who came to school on Monday with next to no memory of the weekend at all. She loved her friends, holding back their hair when they vomited and making sure everyone got home safely. She could understand the appeal of forgetting, she really could, but she knew that drinking so much would undermine her careful control.

It wasn’t until she began at Silas University that she started to discover just how non-existent her control truly was.

All of a sudden her world was filled with things that she couldn’t explain; monsters, spells and death. Her best friend in the world was enthralled by it all, their science-oriented brain thriving in the sea of mysteries and horror. 

When Lafontaine fell under the spell of one of those new horrors, a brain-controlling creature, something inside Perry broke. Her best friend was lost to her and the last thing she had said to them had been so awful. It hadn’t even been true, it had all come out wrong and she hadn’t had the chance to beg forgiveness before that horrible thing had taken her friend.

Perry had taken care of Lafontaine, running her fingers gently through her friend’s short hair to soothe them and crying silently the entire time. It was her fault that this had happened and for all of the control she liked to have, none of it had done the most important person in her life any good at all. 

And then Lafontaine had been okay again and everything was fine. It was better than fine, really, because Perry had them back and she wasn't going to let anything keep them apart again. 

Of course, it wasn't always up to her. 

Perry liked control. It kept her grounded, calmed her and made her feel safe. In the whirlwind of chaos that was her life, especially now that she was at Silas University, little expressions of control were sometimes all she had to hold onto. 

That was perhaps why it terrified her so much the when she lost it. 

She looked at her hands, covered in blood that wasn't hers and she tried to scream but no sound came out. It had been her hand holding the knife, her hands that murdered all those students at the newspaper but it hadn't been her decision. There was something dark controlling her, living inside her and Perry was trapped helplessly inside her own mind. 

She screamed and raged at first. She sobbed for all the innocent people she had killed. The she that was not her. But it did no good and eventually she grew tired, the sort of deep-seated exhaustion that caused her to fall into darkness for what must have been days at a time. She wasn't sure if it was sleep since she was only her thoughts now, a small voice confined to a corner of her brain, but that was all she could liken it to. The alternative, that she might be fading away, was too terrible a thought to entertain and she tried very hard not to think about the fact that each time she seemed to be gone for longer. She refused to let the fear that soon she wouldn't come back at all take over, unable to cope with the idea that she could simply cease to exist. 

She might be gone before her friends, before even Lafontaine, realised that Perry was not in fact Perry anymore. 

***

When Perry woke, or came back into being or whatever it was that followed the times she disappeared, she sensed without really knowing how that she had been gone far longer than ever before. Even having just come back to herself, she felt tired and weak. 

She tried to get her bearings and it was then that she realised her eyes were closed. She was almost glad, not wanting to see whatever horrors the dean was committing with Perry's hands. Part of her was irritated that she had chosen such a time to become aware since like this she had no way of figuring out what was going on or how much time had actually passed since she had last been conscious. 

"Hey, Perr."

Perry was shocked to hear that familiar voice calling her name and she was filled with joy until she came to her sense and realised the inherent danger posed to anyone that was near her in her present state. 

_‘Lafontaine, get away from me. From it. Please. Please don't let it hurt you. I couldn't handle that,’_ she called out in her mind, even though she knew that she couldn’t be heard.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry, you know?”

Perry wanted to shake her head and tell them that it was okay, that it wasn’t their fault. She was trying to listen to their every word but she missed some of it as her thoughts filled with everything she wanted to say to Lafontaine. She wanted to ask if they were taking care of their self; hoping that they were eating properly and not sleeping at their desk as they so often had in the past until Perry had woken them, guiding them to bed. 

_‘I miss you,’_ she thought. _‘God, Laf. I miss you so much. And I don’t think I’ll ever get to tell you again but I lo-’_

“...This thing in your head telling you that you’re weak. That you’re small. But don’t believe it. Okay?”

It was so hard not to believe it. Perry felt the truth of it in her weakened state and everything told her that it was right, that she was quickly turning to nothing. If she hadn't already.

“‘Cause you’re not small, okay? You’re the biggest thing in my world.”

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do more; cry or hug Lafontaine. Of course, once she thought about it there was really no contest. If she had been able to, though, she felt like she would probably be doing both of those things. She supposed that it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to her that even when she was nothing more than a series of thoughts, trapped and useless, that her best friend would know exactly what to say to bring her back. She focused on Lafontaine’s words, repeating them over and over in her head so that she didn’t forget them or let them float away into the darkness that surrounded her. 

She was going to be okay. She wasn’t going to let herself fade away into nothing. Not if she could help it.

Lafontaine needed her. 

“And I’m getting you back.”

If she could have smiled, she would have because she honestly believed that with all of her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically just written because episode 21 crushed my heart and I'm procrastinating schoolwork.


End file.
